Fakebook (22 page)

Juror 8 sat down to our right. She had short graying hair and looked to be in her late fifties. She was wearing a red penny coat that was once expensive. Without her addressing me, I could feel her stare linger. It was making me uncomfortable, and I reflexively ignored it.

Relenting, she addressed the room as a whole: “Does anyone know how to get a monthly MetroCard?” Only one person answered her question, but everyone noticed how peculiar a question it was in a room made up of full-time New York City residents. There was something both sympathetic and off-putting about her—an impression confirmed by the acknowledging glance I exchanged with Juror 10.

The whole experience had a “first day of school” feel to it even before the bailiff, an old-school New York Italian, wheeled in a TV-VCR combo.

“Hi,” the video began. “I'm
60 Minutes
anchor Ed Bradley, and you've been selected to serve on a grand jury!”

“What?” Juror 10 muttered under her breath in bewilderment.

“Hi, I'm Troy McClure…” I mimicked quietly. She and the people behind us laughed. Juror 8 didn't. Instead she attempted to write an email under the desktop, tapping away at the cracked screen of her first-generation iPhone. Her attempt at discretion was undermined by the default
tic
sound of each keystroke.

“What's a grand jury?” Mr. Bradley continued. “I'm glad you asked.”

Pockets of quiet laughter cropped up around the room, along with (and partly because of) the din of
tic
,
tic
,
tic
, which was only interrupted by an audible “oh” and exaggerated recoil whenever Juror 8 mistyped.

“Grand jury is an important part of the judicial process. It's the grand jury's—your—responsibility to determine if a case has enough evidence to justify a trial, or if the case is to be dismissed.”

The video then cut to testimonials.

“I found the experience really rewarding! It was a great way to get to know my community, while giving back to it!”

There was a handful of cynical groans. I was cynical too, but mostly about wasting tax money on landing top-tier talent like Ed Bradley.

“The burden of proof is much lower in a grand jury,” Ed resumed. “It's the petit jury that needs a unanimous vote to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Because you aren't convicting, you just need eleven of a possible twenty-one votes to come to a conclusion.”

I took a look at my twenty fellow jurors. A few of us—the jokers, the cynics, and the genuinely insane—had already revealed ourselves. As the month went on, so would the bleeding hearts, the authoritarians, the wealthy, and the disenfranchised. It was a true cross section and a reminder that New York is too big for any one person to see all at once. The city is a multifaceted gem with sides that are both rough and polished.

“And remember, you are not here to judge the laws. You are here to judge whether or not the laws have been broken. It's up to
you
to determine what probably happened.”

And for the next month, we did. We'd take a four-hour stop in the middle of our day, pushing off the rest of life's demands, to see a procession of cops and robbers (and lawyers). One by one, they would come and tell their conflicting stories. Once again, I found myself in the peculiar circumstance of determining what was true.

It was half past noon and I anxiously watched my files transfer to the portable hard drive. I'd been on jury duty for just over a week, and getting my work done was harder than I'd thought. I worked straight through the weekend and was coming in each day two hours early—no easy task when most nights I was working at home until past midnight.

“I wish I had half days, too,” Joe said as we crossed paths toward the exit.

“I'd love half days. But at this point, I'd settle for just full ones.”

The conversation was all in jest, but I was annoyed. I don't know if I expected praise for working so hard around my civic obligations, but I wasn't getting it. I tried to get it out of my mind by squeezing in some Fakebook nonsense as I walked to the 6 train.

The hospital story was working as planned, laying seeds for the next leg of the story without the need for heavy Photoshop work. And if I could sell it, the cult storyline I had planned—with “the Center's” strict rules about communication—could keep Fake Dave away from his camera phone, and all the time-intensive photoshopping that being on camera requires, for almost a month.

At this point, I was only teasing an upcoming cult storyline. I had my doubts that people would believe it…but it did make a certain sort of crazy sense. Fake Dave had a rough go of it the past four months. His decision to have a completely unstructured life had resulted in nothing but physical and emotional harm. The supreme order of a cult could, conceivably, hold certain appeal for a guy looking for meaning but worn down by the search.

I saw the appeal, anyway. I also had been living with uncertainty since Fakebook began. Juggling two lives and facing the constant risk of being exposed definitely can get to you. I'm sure it had no small part in making the institutional predictability of the Centre Street courthouse so strangely comforting.

After spending four months doing Fakebook and four years in the deadline-driven and crisis-prone world of marketing, I found that jury duty was the first commitment I'd had in a long time that was completely structured. I showed up at one; I left at five. I sat in the same seat, and I responded only to what was presented to me. There was nowhere else I legally could be, so I didn't worry about how else I could be spending my time.

Even though losing four hours a day as Juror 9 put a lot of additional pressure on my life, that time itself was an oasis. It was an island in the middle of hellishly busy weekdays that simply was.

I never took the responsibility lightly, but if I'm being completely honest, it often felt like entertainment. We saw three to six cases a day, making it an interesting cross-section of New York's criminal affairs. Undercover cops, surveillance, money laundering, and product drops—it was fascinating to get a real-world glimpse.

And the grand jury's lack of a screening process made things interesting. Every time Juror 8 called the prosecutor over, it was compelling to see them try to turn her weird MetroCard fixation into a relevant line of questioning. “The jury would like to know…whether you had a monthly pass or a pay-as-you-go MetroCard…in the purse…that was stolen…”

The deliberations were interesting, too. I'll never forget watching Juror 3 lose it when Juror 15 limply tried to explain how shooting two people was not attempted murder.

“What…in your mind…was he attempting to do?” Juror 3 reasonably asked.

“As he was shooting,” Juror 15 began in his predictably wimpy voice, “he said, ‘I'm going to F you N words up.' He didn't say, ‘I am going to kill you.'”

At that, Juror 3 exploded. Thankfully, they were sitting at opposite ends of the room or we would have been witnesses instead of jurors.

And as callous as getting amusement out of the spectacle surrounding real people and real crimes may seem, it's important to remember that we sent no one to jail, just to trial. The weight of convictions didn't fall on us. With the lower stakes and an eleven-of-a-possible-twenty-one vote system to smooth out irrational points of view, we always made the obvious verdict. (Assault with bullets is, in fact, attempted murder.) It was almost kind of fun.

It was coming home that was hard. When five o'clock came around, I'd walk to my neighborhood (with new knowledge of my neighbors) and my second workday began. I'd leave behind other people's lives and dive back into mine, just as I left it—except with a fuller inbox and shorter deadlines. Every night I'd work at my desk in plain sight of my bed until I'd go to bed in plain sight of my desk. The next day, I'd do it all over again.

“Dave, are you listening?”

“What? Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm just a little distracted.”

I was. I'd convinced myself that I had time to head out to Queens for Thai food with Dhara. I didn't. I had an incomplete proposal due to the client by morning. It was ambitious, trying to get a sign-off on that superhero project—to allow me to create a custom illustration for their biggest launch of the year. It was important to me, and I wasn't sure when I'd get to it.

“I was asking if you ever want kids one day.”

“
What
? That's kind of an intense question for, what, a fifth date?”

“I'm not propositioning you, if that's what you're thinking.”

“Ha.”

“I'm not sure I could ever be with someone who would want kids if I didn't.”

On some level, I picked up on her phrasing of “if I didn't,” but I lacked the focus to pull it together. I paused for a moment and shifted in my seat. I gave what I thought was a diplomatic answer. It was something about how I'd be disappointed not to have kids, but I would compromise to live the life of…I don't know. My response probably didn't make sense. It was just an attempt to avoid saying anything definitive.

“I definitely want kids one day. I just wanted to see how you'd answer if I suggested I didn't,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Hey, that's not fair. I trekked all the way out here so you could test me? I'm missing a new episode of
Lost
for this!”

“You know I used to date a body double for
Lost
, right?”

“Please tell me it was the fat guy.”

“Haha. Maybe. I don't think I'm going to tell you who. It's another mystery of the island.”

I took a bite out of the vegetarian dish she'd picked for us and ran a mental slide show of all the well-toned dudes on that beach. For the first time since our first date, I was finding her intimidating.

“Have you been following Fakebook at all?”

“Yes,” she said.

“What do you think?”

“Well…it's kind of weird.”